Scott’s Options

This page will document all my yearly options trades. Trades will still be announced on the home page. The link on the ticker symbol takes you directly to the post where I talk about each trade in more detail.

Please see the bottom of this post for options terminology. Closed profits/losses include commission.

I’m leaving all historical trades from early 2015 and earlier listed below. Trades from 2016 and beyond will be documented on the Puts/Calls tab of the my Portfolio spreadsheet.

4 Responses

I am a dividend investor and just started in 2014 utilizing covered calls and selling puts to maximize returns. I am using TDameritrade as my taxable brokerage. Due to the size of my overall portfolio, I am only trading 1-2 contracts at a time so the $9.99 commission is significant reducing my overall premiums. Is there a different account type within tdameritrade to reduce my commission fees? I see that your commissions are much smaller.

Great question. I also have a brokerage account with Schwab and the commissions with them are similar; the commissions really eat into the premiums.

I was able to get the $1.50/contract commissions by signing up for an account at dough.com. dough is a new options trading platform from the founders of thinkorswim. Since you already have a TD Ameritrade account, you should just be able to sign up for dough (it’s free) and then contact customer support to get changed over to the $1.50 commissions. (Make sure to let them know you are a user of dough.) It is really nice having commissions be so small you don’t really have to worry about it. If you prefer the thinkorswim platform, the $1.50 commissions are good there as well.

dough is built to be simple yet very powerful. I love the graphical approach to options trading. And it has an educational component built into it. You may also enjoy watching the free options educational videos at tastytrade.com; I subscribe to their daily emails and it offers very practical and actionable tips and research. Both dough and tastytrade were started by the guys who made thinkorswim.

Thanks, Robert! It’s something I definitely hope to do more of in the future. As alluded to earlier, I only hold three stocks in my Roth that have more than 100 shares, AVA, CSCO, and KMI. I like the diversification, but it sure limits my ability to effectively sell covered calls.